Meet the Assads

Syrian President Hafez Assad and his family, pose for a photographer June 4, 1974 in Damascus, Syria. Future Syrian President Bashar Assad, right, mounts his bicycle.

Ever since President Bashar Assad’s father, the shrewd, quasi-Stalinist Hafez Assad, rose to power more than forty years ago, the Assad clan has ruled Syria with an iron grip. The current president stacks government institutions with close friends and family members, tying his household to the country’s political and business elite. But one year into the country’s uprising and their government’s violent crackdown, the clan’s future looks uncertain. What fate will befall the family?